KIRKUS REVIEW

A record of 30 years of holding
company Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meetings, replete with insight into the
minds of the company’s leaders.

Berkshire Hathaway chairman,
president, and CEO Warren Buffett, known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” has become a
near-mythical figure in the world of investing, an exemplar of success, and a
role model emulated by many. In his debut, investment adviser Pecaut, with his longtime
business partner Wrenn, details every annual Berkshire Hathaway investor
meeting since 1984. The book begins with a concise history of the company’s
rise to dominance as it eventually amassed more than $500 billion in assets.
The bulk of the book, though, is comprised of brief accounts of Buffet’s
lectures and responses to questions from the crowd, as well as the perspective
of his vice chairman, Charlie Munger. (As the meetings become more popular and
longer, the notes expand as well.) Both Buffett and Munger share their insights
into a broad spectrum of topics, sometimes going beyond financial matters to address
politics and life in general. Buffett shares the central tenets of his value-investing
philosophy, his thoughts on derivatives, his belief that inflation is largely a
political phenomenon, and the reasons why the trade deficit is a bigger deal
than a federal budget deficit. Buffett often delights in contradicting the
academic notion of efficient (and therefore predictable) markets. Sometimes,
it’s interesting to see where Buffett seemed to have it wrong; for example, he
overestimated the fundamental health of the newspaper industry as well as
China’s auto-industry business model. The book doubles as a memoir of sorts, as
Pecaut recounts his own career arc, starting as a philosophy major at Harvard and
becoming a lifetime student of investment strategy. This is a long book, and as
one might expect, there’s a fair amount of redundancy; not every annual meeting
offers an entirely novel set of issues to discuss. Also, because this is meant
as a “curated collection of the best advice and insights Buffett and Munger
have shared over the last three decades,” and not an exacting work of
history, it would have made more sense if it were arranged thematically rather
than chronologically. However, seasoned investors, as well as Buffett fans,
will find plenty of value in this storehouse of financial counsel.

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